Nicholas writes: "More signs that open source software has big appeal in Europe as a small town in Germany has opted to move its entire IT base over to SuSE Linux. Read the full story at InfoWorld.com."

Stephen Beckwith writes: "Over at MacSlash, the "Last" interview with Jordan Hubbard, Mr. FreeBSD. Catch it while you can!" Read the full interview at MacSlash.

NeTraverse Inc. and Xandros today announced a strategic partnership to expand the range of solutions to individual users and corporate clients. By combining Win4Lin with the Xandros Desktop, users can now operate the full range (editor's note: Win4Lin 4 had a limitation on DDraw/3D apps like Media Players and games) of Windows applications, and organizations can leverage the powerful advantages of Linux while preserving their current investments in Windows-based systems and applications.

Microsoft will release a Plus expansion pack for Windows XP to enhance the digital media features in its desktop operating system. At the same time it will make available the final release of its Windows Media 9 software early next year.

A creative team has posted some concept art and mockups about the creation of an alternative to Kicker, the KDE desktop and taskbar, named Slicker. In the meantime, KDE 3.0.5a was released, incorporating the latest security fixes.

Last week, when research firm Meta Group of Stamford, Conn., predicted that Microsoft would begin to support Linux by late 2004 with some of its key server products -- Exchange, IIS, SQL server, and the like -- reactions ranged from outrage to befuddlement. A source inside Microsoft called the report "wacky." Analysts of all stripes debated the veracity of the findings. Even Dale Kutnick, Meta's chief research officer, admitted that Microsoft "is pissed." Read the article at Business 2.0.

Tinyminds features an interview with Linux kernel hacker Robert M. Love, best known for the preemptive kernel patch.

Lycoris, makers of the popular Desktop/LX Linux package, released their ProductivityPak Friday featuring a highly customized and integrated Openoffice.org and PDA Sync tool. With the ProductivityPak, Lycoris has introduced features not found in typical OpenOffice.org installations, such as a spell checker, and has advertised compatibility with, among other formats, Office XP documents.

Similar to Sharp's Zaurus PDA which uses Linux, Hitachi has been working on a new PocketPC PDA which includes a built-in keyboard. In addition this device includes an integrated digital camera and uses Sprint's CDMA 1xRTT wireless network. PocketPC thoughts hosts a picture and some very little details on this device which were gathered from the GadgetFest in San Diego.

Have you ever wondered why in other Operating Systems such as Windows, MacOS or even BeOS installing software is so easy compared to Linux? In such OSes you can simply download and decompress a file or run an installer process which will easily walk you through the process.

Saw it at DistroWatch: "Debian 3.0r1 is out. The revisions of Debian's stable branches are released to incorporate all security updates and critical bug fixes since the last stable release and this one is no exception. The following major packages were affected: the Linux Kernel (the default Kernel upgraded to 2.2.22), apache, ethereal, fetchmail, gaim, glibc, kdelibs, php, postfix, python, samba, snort and xinetd, among many others; see the complete ChangeLog for details."

MenuetOS 0.72 released with TCP/IP from Mike Hibbett & demos: OpenGL, 3D Maze, games, GUI appearance setup etc. Additionally, SkyOS has some interesting updates too.

By 2010 supercomputers could be carrying out more than 1,000 trillion calculations per second. The ambitious goal has been set by the US Government to help its scientists tackle problems that would otherwise take too long to simulate.

The doctrine that computing power doubles every 18 to 24 months has been considered gospel for the past three decades. Now it may be time for a new look.